


A Harsh Judge of Character

by Cookies_and_Chaos



Category: Malory Towers - Enid Blyton
Genre: First Day of School, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:13:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28112205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cookies_and_Chaos/pseuds/Cookies_and_Chaos
Summary: Alicia should really have expected that growing up would reveal flaws in her outlook on life. Pre-canon. Written for the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge 2020, Day 4, "Four Hard Shells".
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3
Collections: 12 Days of Christmas Challenge 2020





	A Harsh Judge of Character

Alicia waved her mother goodbye and steadfastly ignored the faces her brothers were pulling. Wretches. Of course they had insisted on coming along to drop her off at the station. She could only be thankful for the fact that they had arrived so early that there were few other Malory Towers girls around for them to humiliate her in front of. They had been just about to start with the larking about when Alicia's new form mistress, Miss Potts, had appeared. There was something so collected and firm-handed about her that even Roger, never one to shy away from an opportunity to embarrass Alicia, had been completely silent.

"I'll take you to your carriage, we put all of the first formers together and keep an eye on you so you can't get up to any mischief," Miss Potts said and she led Alicia towards one of the carriages. Alicia scurried after her, wondering if the comment about mischief was a generic one that she used for all the new girls or whether it had been specially tailored for her, courtesy of her day school report.

Alicia grimaced behind Miss Potts' back as she wondered what exactly her old teachers had said about her.

"Here we are, there's just one other girl here for North Tower so far, I'm sure the others shall be here soon enough," Miss Potts said.

Alicia climbed up into the carriage and peered down, looking for the one other girl. Tucked away, pressed tightly against the side of the train, was a fading willow of a girl who Alicia swore might disappear completely if no-one looked at her for long enough. Alicia strode over and the girl shuffled back even further.

"Hallo, I'm Alicia, nice to meet you." Alicia stuck her hand out and waited.

The other girl looked at her hand, looked up into her face, and then back at her hand. Alicia kept her face as still as possible, though part of her wanted to ask whatever was wrong with this girl that she couldn't even return a straight-forward greeting. After what felt like forever, the girl took Alicia's hand (and her grip was rather tighter than Alicia expected!) and shook it.

"Violet. Nice to meet you," the girl said.

Deciding she might have already outworn her welcome, Alicia went to find herself a seat. Settled in a window seat, Alicia checked her watch. Surely some of the others should arrive soon. Lord help her if they were all like Violet. She'd run away back to day school if that were the case!

The merest thought of her day school made her squirm. Perhaps she wouldn't run back there after all. Too many memories about poor choices, lost friendships, and pranks that had gone past the point of humour to outright cruelty (though, Alicia thought ruefully, she hadn't always seen that at the time). It was a common reproach in Alicia's report cards: _'Alicia's work has never been the problem. Her behaviour, however, is another matter.'_

Her mother had been so disappointed and Alicia, for all her well-worn pretenses about not caring a jot of what others thought of her, had felt sick to the pit of her stomach when her mother had read her last report and sighed.

She was hard.

That was what most of the teachers had said about her. That she was hard on herself and even harder on others, scornful when they failed to meet her standards and expectations over even the silliest of things. Not a soul got close to Alicia Johns and she wouldn't hear a word about giving them a second chance.

Alicia suspected it was a word that had come up many-a-time in her transfer report too. Even if there couldn't have been anything too terrible written about her (for, after all, would Malory Towers take a girl so awful?), Alicia knew the teachers would already be forming their opinions about who she was. If she didn't take care, the other girls would form their own rather quickly too. Too many sharp words, too many brutal comments, too much derision and she would be in for a very lonely time at Malory Towers indeed.

"Hallo! You must be Alicia, Miss Potts said there were two girls here and you're not Violet." A girl flumped down onto the seat opposite Alicia and her hand-case immediately burst open. "Oh, bother..."

Alicia rolled her eyes as she helped the girl gather up her belongings. She had to crawl under her own chair to snatch up a piece of paper before it was trampled by another girl stepping into the seats behind them. Really, shrinking violets and harebrained chaos seemed to be what she should expect from Malory Towers.

 _This is some of what your teachers meant. You form opinions too quickly, too harshly..._ Alicia didn't like the way that sounded in her head, nor how she could see her mother's disappointment all over again in her mind's eye, so she swallowed her instinct to make a sharp and cutting comment.

"Here! Your Health Certificate, can't be losing that before you get there. They'll stick you in quarantine," Alicia handed the certificate back to the girl and she shoved it into her hand-case.

"Would they really?" the girl asked, doing up her case tightly and setting it on her lap.

"Absolutely. You'd have to spend your first two weeks of school in the San, wouldn't be much fun, I should say," Alicia said.

"No wonder mother kept telling me how important it was. Do remind me about it when we get there, will you? I just know I shall forget!"

Alicia soon learnt that Irene, for that was her name, was also new to the school and despite Alicia's initial uncertainty that she would enjoy the company of such a scatterbrain, Alicia found herself taking great delight in their conversation. She tried not to think too hard about what might have happened if she hadn't let that little prick of conscience change the way she intended to react.

"Are you looking forward to boarding?" Irene asked suddenly, "I wasn't so sure about it myself until my mother pointed out that I would be allowed to challenge myself with my Maths here."

Alicia wondered what her face looked like at that most peculiar statement because Irene grinned.

"I think boarding is fine. I shan't get homesick or any silliness like that," Alicia said, "I'm not some silly baby". She almost winced at her immediate need to prove to this girl that she didn't need anyone.

Irene didn't bat an eyelid and any offense that might have been taken by another girl from Alicia's scorn seemed remarkably absent from Irene. Still, Alicia reminded herself, someone else not reacting was not an excuse for replying like that in the first place.

"Do you enjoy Maths then?" Alicia asked, moving the conversation away from herself. "Sounds bats to me but I suppose it takes all sorts."

"I've loved it since I was little. You can understand the whole world if you learn to love Maths. But at my old school, the teachers would only give extra challenges to the boys. They said girls wouldn't have much need for Maths as long as they could do enough to manage buying groceries and the like." Irene pulled a face and Alicia rolled her eyes in mutual disdain at the sentiment.

"My teachers weren't so bad as all that," Alicia said, "and my mother wouldn't have let them be, I shouldn't have thought. She came to Malory Towers herself years ago."

"Did she really?"

Before Alicia could continue, they were joined by two other girls: Jean, a Scottish girl who would be joining them in North Tower, and Betty, a West Tower girl who hadn't fancied sitting by herself so had decided to just pal up with the first group of girls she saw. Alicia couldn't help smiling back when Betty flashed her a grin that lit up her eyes in wicked amusement.

"Go on then, tell us what your mother has told you about Malory Towers. No-one in my family has ever been to boarding school before," Irene encouraged Alicia to continue.

"Well, she says that Matron will _definitely_ remember her. I think it's a bit of a cheek actually that she gives my brothers and I such a ticking off for playing tricks when my grandpa says she was just as bad at my age. There was this one trick..."

And as Alicia told the story of one of her mother's more daring tricks, prompting Irene to burst out with an explosive laugh that drew attention up and down the carriage, she wondered whether she might have had an easier time at day school if she'd just taken an extra moment before resolutely sizing people up.

Perhaps her mother had been right when she'd said that Malory Towers would have a good few things to teach her, if she just stopped for a moment and allowed herself to learn.


End file.
